Shakespeare’s “No” and the Allure of Denial

“…yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.” –Ulysses, James Joyce

In any discussion of the “no,” it seems worthwhile to consider the opposite, as a point of reference.

The most famous “yes” in Western literature is the last word of James Joyce’s landmark seven-hundred-plus-page novel. It is a yes about which essays and, no doubt, books have been written. It is an expansive yes, a warm-blooded, open-armed yes, spoken by the character Molly Bloom—the novel’s “Penelope” to Leopold Bloom’s “Ulysses”—a yes that, at once, invites and suggests a universe. And yet, it is, also, an end—the end. To a very long novel. A satisfactory finish after which a reader, having at last come to this point, can with a smile close the book. “Yes” doesn’t lead to questions. It doesn’t provoke action or invite further development. It suggests acceptance, resolution, perhaps even happiness…if not exactly happily ever after.

If a word of affirmation can resoundingly conclude a great story, what might a word of negation do? Those who have read books about the craft of writing fiction already know one answer. The no, counterintuitively, is what makes so many stories go. A character wants something. If she gets that something immediately, by simply asking for it, the story ends; or, rather, there is no story. Alternately, a character is told, “no”—whether by an inner voice or another person, or by society, or by the gods, or by nature; that person must then overcome her antagonist, an opposing force or forces, to get what she wants or needs, and the story is made. The struggle, the overcoming the no, is the story; and the resolution is how things turn out in the end. The yes.

With very little ado, Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra serves up (as if upon a platter of delights) a wonderful and enticing buffet of no’s right at the beginning, spending most of Act I, Scene I, on the pleasures of denial. The play’s very first word, spoken by Philo is—serendipitous for me—“Nay”!

Line one and two: “Nay, but this dotage of our general’s / O’erflows the measure …”

Philo speaks to Demetrius, in Cleopatra’s palace, about their mutual friend Mark Antony, a great warrior and descendent of Hercules, whose “dotage” involves excessive indulgences in the pleasures of the flesh provided by the beautiful and sensuous Egyptian queen. Philo would have his general back as the brave commander he has been in times past, rather than this “strumpet’s fool,” who languishes in love. This is Philo’s wish, though not explicitly spoken. The answer, expressed by the scene to follow, is this: no.

Antony and Cleopatra enter. We are only ten lines in. Their exchange speaks to the theme: 

Cleopatra: “If it be love indeed, tell me how much.”
Antony: “There’s beggary in the love that can be
reckon’d.”

Antony denies the queen; in this, we hear from him his first no. He will not satisfy her question. To give her the measure of his love, a finite figure or amount, would be the end of this game or story, and they both want their love play to continue. As they verbally tussle in debate, a messenger arrives: word from Rome for Antony. He doesn’t want to hear it, knowing it comes either from Cesar or his own wife, Fulvia—messages from neither expected to be good news and likely to disturb his pleasure. A no allows him to forestall disruption.

Naturally provocative, Cleopatra pushes, with yet another no to meet his own: 

“Nay, hear them, Antony.
Fulvia perchance is angry; or who knows
If the scarce-bearded Cesar have not sent
His pow’rful mandate to you: ‘Do this, or this;
Take in that kingdom, and enfranchise that;
Perform’t, or else we damn thee.’” (I. i., 23)

Antony demurs. Cleopatra insists: “You must not stay here longer…Call in the messengers…” He says, no, yet again; more colorfully:

“Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch
Of the rang’d empire fall! Here is my space,
Kingdoms are clay…
…the nobleness of life
Is to do thus [embracing Cleopatra]…” (37)

His no prolongs the banquet of their lovemaking.

Cleopatra, still unsatisfied, unconvinced or wishing to hear more, dismisses his words: “Excellent falsehood!” This pulls from him his most exuberant protestation:

“But stirr’d by Cleopatra.
Now for the love of Love, and her soft hours,
Let’s not confound the time with conference harsh;
There’s not a minute of our lives should stretch
Without some pleasure now. What sport to-night?” (47)

 She prods, a final time: “Hear the ambassadors.” But he refuses still, and says: “No messenger but thine, and all alone, / To-night we’ll wander through the streets….” And, to the messenger who lingers: “Speak / not to us.” So saying, they exit, followed by the messenger, who will get no satisfaction, no answer on that night. And we, the audience, must wait, and wonder upon that message—and what comes next.

Coriolanus and the Perils of People Pleasing

Was Coriolanus a “people pleaser?” If you’ve read this one or seen it performed, your first answer might be to say, no. Not by a long shot.

Coriolanus, as the play of the same name begins, is a great warrior of Rome who, born Caius Martius, earns his resonant cognomen as a laurel for—as Shakespeare narrates the feat—single handedly defeating the city of Corioles as his cowardly troops go the other way. On returning to Rome, beyond his new name, he is honored with a nomination to the role of consul, a position of authority and prestige. A ceremonial obligation is put to him, the fulfillment of which will allow for his election and elevation: show us and the people your wounds, tell us what wonders you have done for us. This is his reply:

“… Your honors’ pardon;
I had rather have my wounds to heal again
Than hear say how I got them.” (II. ii., 67)

But this is unacceptable. He is urged by all around him to relent, to give the people what they require, and he in turn will receive their adulation and their votes. He refuses. He will not beg for their love and he will not show them his wounds. For this, beyond being denied the high station of consul, he is, at first, threatened with execution by being thrown off a precipitous rock, then, instead, he is banished from Rome, from whence he goes, leaving behind mother, wife, child, and country for the wilderness (briefly) as a kind of animal or dragon who will not play the games of politics.

Coriolanus chooses banishment to pandering and self-promotion, the desert to the sacrifice of his convictions. These are not the actions of a people pleaser, it would seem. But there are still two acts left to go.

Critics who admire the play as a great work of art and an eloquent testament to Shakespeare’s mastery of tragedy often say the protagonist is a kind of brute or child. He is a mighty fighter unschooled in the ways of peace; he does not have the maturity to live in a society with people who hold values that he finds wanting and ignoble. His ideals are pure and rigid. He cannot “make it work” or “get along” with others unless they see the world as he does. These phrases make it work, get along, people pleaser, are from our time, of course, and not Shakespeare’s (late 1500s, early 1600s), much less that of the historical Coriolanus (fifth century BCE), and yet they are timeless in their meaning and offer a useful way to look at this figure.

From where we consider these matters in the twenty-first century, we generally agree it’s no good to be a people pleaser. To be one means to have compromised integrity, to crave approval rather than to accept the call to struggle for self-affirmation and to find and hold firm to one’s own convictions. But, that said, we also acknowledge that to be human is to be imperfect. To be a person in the world is to sometimes seek the approval of others, to doubt one’s own convictions, and to crave affirmation from outside of oneself. A person must be flexible, right?

Coriolanus, toward the end of the play—now a general who leads against Rome the Volscians, those ones whose city he laid waste and from which he earned his name—is likened by Cominius, his former commander, to a divinity:

“If
He is their god; he leads them like a thing
Made by some other deity than Nature,
That shapes man better; and they follow him
Against us brats with no less confidence
Than boys pursuing summer butterflies,
Or butchers killing flies.” (IV. Vi., 90)

Army at his back, Rome trembles before him. The city is his for the taking, for the burning. Nothing stands in his way; not Cominius, who asks that he stand down; not Menenius, the father-figure in his life, to whom he will not even speak.

He only gives in when his mother, Volumnia, comes to him, along with Coriolanus’s wife and child, a potent trinity, who get down on their knees to beg for mercy, for his love and duty as son, husband, and father. And suddenly he doubts. He too is human, not a god. He cannot help but want to please his mother. And, for this, people pleaser at last, he pays the ultimate price—as the citizens of Corioles, re-awakened to their hatred of this ravager of their city, and the Volscian soldiers, denied their revenge upon Rome, see in him a weakened, compromised figure and put him to the sword.

Image credit: Volumnia Pleading with Coriolanus, by Richard Westall, Oil on Canvas, ca. 1800. Source: Folger Shakespeare Library; LUNA: Folger Digital Image Collection. License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC By-SA 4.0)

What’s in a Name

“… O, be some other name! / What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other word would smell as sweet …” —Romeo and Juliet II.ii, 42 (references to Shakespeare’s writing here and throughout are to the text of The Riverside Shakespeare (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1974).

“Shakespeare and a Cup of Coffee” is not the name I had first for the title of my blog. It was, rather, “Shakespeare for Breakfast,” which I thought smart, with several suggested obvious meanings. I could eat Shakespeare for breakfast, he’s no match for me; and, my plan was to be doing my reading with breakfast, after my personal literary writing endeavors but prior to when the responsibilities of my day job kicked in. Before I launched this auspicious enterprise, I thought it sensible to check if anyone else had chosen to use this as a title or a name for a project, book or blog, and, on checking, discovered an august institution in the United Kingdom that had already struck a claim to the wonderful appellation. So I went looking elsewhere, settling happily on that key component of a morning ritual so familiar to many—and to me—and so enjoyable. Coffee. Coffee in the morning. And Shakespeare. Was there a better way to start one’s day? Perfect. What’s in a name? A blog by any other word would still be me stumbling blindly, but what was key here was the dawn, the early-day hours, something warm, Shakespeare. And I had these things. And coffee seems to make everything better, so I had that too. And there you go.

For what it’s worth, I’ll admit that though I was and am happy with my choice, I nevertheless sought validation for it. For this I turned to Alexander Schmidt’s Shakespeare Lexicon and Quotation Dictionary, seeking evidence of interest in and some expression of coffee in the work of the Bard. Plenty of references to breakfast were to be found, but not a single one to coffee. Was it possible that Shakespeare wrote his plays without the benefit of coffee? I would imagine that if coffee had been available to him, he would have drunk it gladly and regularly. I have read, don’t ask me where, that coffee fueled the intellectuals of the Enlightenment. Just imagine, if Shakespeare indeed hadn’t had the benefit of coffee, what might have been possible had he had it? Plays that would have moved the people to early revolution? But perhaps he only didn’t write about coffee and drank it without making mention of that powerful and tasty elixir. As anyone with such a question nowadays would, I went to Google for the answer and found an article from the New York Times with this extraordinary title: “Shakespearean Diet: Pasta, no Coffee.” An interesting read if not an authoritative answer, the piece ends with a quotation from Jeffrey Horowitz, founder of the Shakespeare-oriented theater company Theater for a New Audience, who seemed to be intimately acquainted with the diet of the Elizabethans and who pointed out that what was most fascinating was not what Shakespeare ate, but what he did not: “He didn't have coffee, he didn't have vanilla, he didn't have cocoa,” Mr. Horowitz said. “Imagine writing Hamlet without a cup of coffee. That's amazing.”

Amazing, I agree. Now what’s this about cocoa?